Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR We know al-qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria are we supporting al-qaeda in Syria It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all thank you very very You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
But we ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys again introducing our friend Ray McGovern.
This is not the same interview you just heard.
It's an entirely different one.
Hey, Ray, welcome back to the show.
Thank you, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
You were an analyst at the CIA for 27 years starting and ending when?
Starting in early 63 and ending with George HW Bush in office in January of 1990.
All right, then so And we'll get to that aspect of this story here in a bit because I think there is one if I remember right.
But let's just start with the basics here.
It's June the 8th 2018 So that makes it the anniversary again of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty What's the USS Liberty, Ray?
Well, it was a Navy ship, but it was outfitted to collect electronic and other technical information from places where we needed intelligence.
It operated in international waters.
It had just been refurbished and it was the most expensive intelligence collection mechanism in history and it was sailing in international waters off the Sinai during the Six-day war in June 1967 so 51 years ago.
Hmm and then yeah, but so the Israelis are our most bestest friends in the whole wide world It's said on TV.
And so I think that geez if this really happened at all Which I'm very suspicious of I'm pretending to be for the sake of this question, then it must have been a big accident Yeah, right, right Let me Approach this Scott in a personal way.
I move in circles where I had long since known about this disaster and how the United States government the United States Congress and To its discredit the United States Navy had all covered up the fact that Israel undeniably with tangible evidence that we have On purpose tried to sink the USS Liberty and leave no survivors.
I will say that again Sink the USS Liberty.
It had a crew of about 280 as I recall and Leave no survivors Long story short.
They did kill 34 They did wound over a hundred and seventy and they're about to complete the job when one Enterprising young sailor from Texas put together with bailing wire a Connection to a radar that the route that the Israelis had not knocked out.
They knocked out all the others They hadn't knocked out this one because it had not been active for weeks.
Well, Terry Harbaugh Jay connected those wires sent out an SOS and Immediately the Israelis got out of Dodge so to speak they broke off the patrol boat PT boat attacks one of which had shot a torpedo midships and they broke off the strafing of the of the lifeboats and The the aircraft went home and the PT boats went home the commander of that part of the Naval fleet in the Mediterranean immediately dispatched fighter bombers from USS Saratoga and the USS America to Relieve one of his ships that was under attack They were called back They were called back by none other than for first secretary of defense McNamara, but then when Admiral Geitz Had the guts to say sir Mr. McNamara One of my ships is under attack I'm afraid I'm not going to recall the fighter bombers on their way to do battle with whoever is attacking them I need to speak to your supervisor.
Whoa Guess what?
LBJ gets on the line.
He says now you all call those call those please back We don't want to put a black mark on our ally Israel do it now and do it quickly and so he did Unbelievable So this is you know, this is all available and it's just not available in most US newspapers What I was thinking of is just well on that point for just one second an admiral and you already did But I like it.
Sorry an Admiral says to the secretary of defense.
Yeah, I'm not buying that.
I want to talk to your boss and Then Lyndon Baines Johnson gets on the line and tells this Admiral Refute to not defend to call back his planes and not defend an American ship That is being attacked by a foreign government a foreign military Yeah, the gutsy thing that Admiral Gates did of course was insist on speaking a rank above McNamara the defense secretary Who really is dubiously in the chain of command anyway, so I want to talk to the commander-in-chief But when the commander-in-chief told him what to do Well, you know these people don't become admirals by refusing to obey orders.
He did what he what he was told to do and The good news was that the SOS saved the day in other words Israelis are deceptive right away is oh my goodness We better get out of here and they did and so there were survivors.
And so there was a ship that was able to Just just barely make it back to Malta to be so that so bodies could be taken off and and the the men the men were were taken to to Greece and Each one of them each one of the survivors Was visited by a senior Navy officer commander And they were told look you are not allowed to say anything about what happened today You're not allowed to talk about this with your fellow crew people or your crew members.
They're all men at those those days And you are not allowed to discuss this even with your wife.
And if you do we're gonna court-martial you That was the first thing that was administered to these guys as they received first aid in in Greece So now you want to know what PTSD looks like Scott You want to you want to see what it really looks like?
Well, you talk to one of those crew members who for years For 20 30 years were unable to share this hard experience everything not only they shoot up with the Cover-up my god with even their their their wives on the pain of court-martial.
So what I thought I'd do is just get into this in a personal way because They started to say I knew I knew the story, but I didn't know any people and you know, if you're not there You don't have an immediate touch with with what happened And if if you don't know any people, well, you're you're double removed in my view.
So What happened?well Gosh, it must be about 15 years ago That the professor John Mearsheimer from University of Chicago and Stephen Waltz from Harvard Wrote this incredible book.
It was called the Israel Lobby.
Okay now They did it it was first an article it was commissioned by the Atlantic magazine and when they saw the draft they said Oh my you know, thanks very much, but no, thanks Now we know we'll give you we'll give you you know, a severance or whatever it is they call it but a kill a kill Stipend but no, we can't publish it.
They couldn't get it published anywhere They had to go to the London Review of Books to get it published.
Okay now it was very explosive It listed all the ways in which the Israel Lobby Exercised its power in this country in the United States So here it is published by the London Review of Books and McGovern gets a hold of it He's going down to give a talk in a place called Springfield, Missouri.
Okay, it's an obscure Sizable town but this church wanted me to come down there was 300 people in this this audience And so on the way down I read I read this.
I read this article.
I said my god Moses I Arrived there was talking about Iraq at the time.
That was the live issue and Toward the end.
We had a Q&A and and one of the people said now mr.
McGovern What do you think about the US Liberty or no, that's not what they thought they said, what do you think of Mearsheimer and Waltz the most recent article in London Review of Books and I Said thank you.
Thank you.
Jesus.
You know, I just read it, you know, so I said well, you know I just read it on the plane and I think it's excellent.
But the one thing I don't understand is if they're Adducing evidence as to how Israel has inordinate influence on the United States they missed they missed the most convincing episode and that is the the shooting up of the USS Liberty on June 8th 1967 I can't understand why that where they would miss that.
I mean that one showed that the Israelis can literally get away with murder Now I looked out at that audience Scott 300 people there and Everybody had this look of why?
Yeses.
I'm I had it done.
So I said well How many how many of you know about the attack on the USS Liberty?
Three people raise their hands.
Okay, so one in the way in the back one in the middle So I've called one in the front.
I said sir Could you get up and tell us how you you know about the USS Liberty?
Well Guy gets up ramrod straight.
He says Sergeant Bryce Lockwood US Marine Corps member of USS Liberty crew, sir So So McGovern says well Would you be able to come up and tell us what happened?
I mean that would be better than made recount Sir, I have I have not been able to I have not been able to do that But it's been It's been 35 years now.
I would like to try to that tonight.
Yes, sir He marches up, right?
And he spends 10 minutes behind the microphone Telling about how his entire contingent of marine radio Intercept operators was demolished by the Israeli torpedo that hit him midships That the only reason he was able to escape was that he was behind the bulwark.
He had the sensitive encryption Machinery that he was about to drop with a very large boulder over the ship Overside so that no one get it could get it and just to recount how he Had to go back down into that compartment a he He was able to rescue one of the guys that was still alive another guy he had by the he had by the hand Okay, and he was trying somebody closed the hatch for god's sake he bangs on the hatch They open the hatch and he's pulling this other guy and he slips the slips out of his reach And goes through the great hole uh into the mediterranean Well bryce lockwood He calls himself the old sarge.
He's still fitting fitting fit as a fiddle um, he told that story and everyone was uh, Stoolie moved and that freed him up and freed a lot of his colleagues To tell that terrible story as to what happened how the israeli aircrafts Reconnoitered the uss liberty during the morning of june 8th 1967, you know, they're very friendly.
Of course, there's you know They had israeli markings and the pilot would be waving and some of the sailors that off duty would be sunbathing Oh very very genial and then all of a sudden Unmarked aircraft came back Mirages french mirages and shot up all the antennae first on the on the liberty and then started spreading napalm And all kinds of other stuff to kill the crew and sink the ship now uh, I have to tell you this vignette too because it's a very personal experience and uh, It has to do with a lot of things.
One is this that The sailor his name was terry harbaugh.
He was from texas.
I think he was 20 at the time 20 years old Uh, he says to captain mcgonigal.
He said captain I think that I can get that radar working, you know the one that the israelis don't know works But I need to connect it with this uh with this plug and the bailing wire and mcgonigal looks at him.
He says carbide What are you gonna swim across that napalm name?
We just you're good at swimming across napalm Carbide he says I'd like to try sir permission granted He connects it And gets the signal out Only way that the ship wasn't sunk with the entire crew of what 280 or whatever it was uh killed now, why do I mention that well because Gradually and especially when admiral thomas moorer who had been Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff When he took an active interest in this case some of it started to leak out some of the crewmen, uh were actually Courageous enough to write books about it and all of a sudden I learned That terry harvardier is going to be given the silver star Now that's just below the the medal of honor, right?
I said who's going to give him that this congressman out there in the central valley of california when next wednesday I get on a plane and I get out there and I get there the morning of the presentation a modest conference a modest press conference with local media there And about seven or eight of the survivors a couple of them.
I already knew I had not met terry harvardier It turned out he was working for the local congressman there a fellow named devon nunes Who had the guts to insist that the army approved a silver star?for his staffer terry harvardier the ceremony was Was not uh with great flourish.
It was it was very earnest and everyone was just delighted That terry got recognition for saving the ship and the crew we went out to lunch after that and I tell you when I said before If you want to know what ptsd looks like think about Think about sailors who went through this experience and were told they couldn't confide even to their wives As to what really happened think about all the lives that were told that it was a great big mistake by the israelis We know it wasn't a mistake.
We have intercepted Communications from pilot to ground ground control.
Okay.
Here it is.
That's an american ship.
That's an american flag Follow your orders, but but but it's an american Do what you're told follow your orders Okay, so it's not like we're making this stuff up.
It's out there in uh, Uh, actually it was used as case studies in intelligence school at fort hollabird when the intelligence school was there so So if I feel uh a little emotional about this, well, I think that anybody who has had Even those secondhand experience with actual people above than this Uh, if you're not emotional You're not human Hey y'all scott here.
Here's how to support the show Patreon.com scott horton show if you want to donate per interview Um and also scott horton.org Donate, uh anyone who donates twenty dollars Get a copy of the audio book of fool's errand anyone who knows fifty dollars That'll get you a signed copy of the paperback In the mail there and anyone who donates a hundred dollars gets either a qr code commodity disc Or a lifetime subscription now only for one hundred dollars not to a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks Libertarian audiobooks listen and think.com there.
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All right.
Thanks All right.
Well, so tell me about what was going on at cia headquarters in 1967 when the israelis attacked an nsa ship and Lbj and magnum era helped them get away with it I mean, and I know you guys are all supposed to be compartmentalized and you're analysts not a spy and I don't know what but Certainly everybody's gossiping at least in the cafeteria at lunchtime that like man Did you hear what the israelis did or not or what tell me?
Yeah, well I was working on a soviet foreign policy at the time But of course the russians were involved in the middle east as well.
So I had a window into this um there was a really interesting schizophrenia in among the analysts of israel arab states at cia One thing that will boggle your mind is this When I arrived in 1963 64 and started to get get my sea legs And wandering around finding out who else is involved particularly in in the middle east since the soviet union was so much involved there I learned or looked around and I saw whoa You know in the arab israeli branch There are no people of jewish extraction I Said to myself Holy moses, that's odd I wondered I wonder if this is deliberate So I chose my time carefully and I asked the branch chief there I say you have no people of jewish extraction here.
Is that is that an accident?
He said no, it's not an accident, right?
Um You know, uh, we uh, we just think that in order to get the really objective analysis here And it's just a pre-question he said we don't have any arabs either you notice that I said, yeah, I noticed that he said so Now what was mcgovern's reaction?
Big liberal mcgovern.
Yeah, he said.
Oh, that's terrible.
That's unamerican.
Oh, that's How can you do that?
You know?
Well, guess what?
Guess what?
It was a very enlightened policy And i'll just fast forward to now.
Well, wait a minute though you terrible Uh anti-semite you for remembering that.
Um, what about mix on uh, Uh irish policy or whatever, you know as a d is it was it was it like that on everything or is just jews in israel?
Well, you know, it's really funny.
You should uh mention that because later I I had a higher office I was the acting national intelligence officer for western europe Okay, now that was in the 70s mid 70s when all hell broke loose in northern ireland Now I know a lot about ireland.
I have cousins there have been there many many times and I was deathly afraid That the head of analysis would come down and say mcgovern You know a lot about ireland We want you to be the analyst on the troubles there between north and south ireland and what's going on The the troubles that are going on and as they call them in northern ireland now I would have to say Scott I would have to say no way No way will I take that job?my ethos in intelligence and the ethos of those around me in those days was We need to be really really careful not to let any personal bias interfere with our analysis and it is Constitutionally impossible for me for my constitution for me to be objective about what's going on in northern ireland.
Sorry, mr Casey, I can't do that find somebody else But they didn't even ask you or they did No, they didn't they didn't even ask you so you didn't have to turn it down.
That's correct but you know, I was worried and I kept thinking about this because Not many people knew much about what was going on in ireland You know most of the data was coming from mi6 and mi5 and you know british friends But we're giving a slightly slanted view of what's going on there, but I held my peace I chipped in with the analysts themselves as to what I knew but no one asked me to do that But you know, that's so look I mean, but yeah to be clear about this.
This is not some kind of you know, old school latent uh, you know bigotry in the system that you're Reminiscing about here.
This is just simply professionalism and trying to prevent conflicts of interest when it comes to intelligence analysis, right?
I mean, i'm sorry.
We're kind of off on a tangent here, but it's important Yeah, well i'm glad we're on that tangent because it is a very important consideration um You know, it's really hard it's very difficult because Let's say you want somebody who knows a whole lot about egypt or syria well Most of the people will be of arab extraction, you know And it's really hard, uh to find people equally competent, but you can And what i'm saying here is that the people who had their heads screwed on correctly, uh in the early 60s at least Made a conscious effort to make sure that they got those people people with with no dual dual allegiance as we say uh, no, um no people who qualify for israeli or arab citizenship, uh, so You know, that's that was really really important and I need to say that right now And what I know of the last two decades uh, the arab israeli branch Is run by and populated mostly by people who are of jewish extraction There are very few people who give a balanced view with respect to what the arab's grievances are What the palestinian situation is all about that's very different from the old days And it's part of the total corruption of the analysis division of cia.
I'll say one more thing scott because it's important uh even with this, um, even with this unbiased crew of analysts back in the 60s Well, we'll talk about 67 when when the Uh, the attack took place on the liberty uh, there was this real real respect and admiration for the israeli Military capability, you know the arabs were looked on as kind of Feckless militarily speaking, of course, they weren't in receipt of any of our weaponry That's one of the reasons of course, but there was this prejudice really I think that's not too too strong a word uh When the israelis struck out at something with their U.s.
Equipment they usually succeeded.
So there was this Almost overt admiration for israel's military capability Now with respect to the incident itself We were really worried That the russians would get overtly involved Uh on behalf of the arabs, uh after all the russians and we And everyone else who followed that situation knew that the israeli justification for this attack Was what the bronx we called a croc.
Okay Now, how do I know that?well, um You know, you have to take mcgovern's word for it It was uh, none other than Former israeli prime minister menachem begin Now this is 35 years ago But this is what he said in the speech And this is what was reported in new york times Surprise surprise I quote This is menachem begin former prime minister of israel in june 1967 we had a choice The egyptian army concentrations in the sinai approaches Do not prove Do not prove that nasser was really about to attack us We must be honest with ourselves We decided to attack him New york times august 1982 so I guess you know, you feel a little headstrong every now and then your former prime minister You tell the truth and i'll just repeat Nasser was not really about to attack us.
We must be honest with ourselves.
We decided to attack him now We know that as a result of that attack and that war israel occupied territories for the last 51 years in palestinian lands in gaza, which is a The biggest open air prison in in the world's history in the west bank and I was just there last year at this time Uh, that was what the late with the russian i'm, sorry Or the germans or the nazis called lebensraum.
Okay room to live Widen the borders and and what the israelis have been doing ever since is colonizing those areas Uh putting down the israel the the arab and palestinian populations And so here we have the prime minister Admitting that it was a war of aggression But the israeli influence with the united states first and foremost, but also In western europe, particularly germany where the germans all still have a very guilty conscience, which they should There can't be any balanced view of this thing So that the israel so that the palestinians will be given a fair shot at a decent life By the way, I just want to mention here one more footnote for that six days in israel 45 years ago and this is by miko peled who's the son of Powerful former israeli general and he tells his own Side of that and says that it was the military cabinet Whatever the the very top group of generals and then the civilian cabinet And the prime minister at the time was relatively weak And the egyptians had made the mistake of moving their you know much of their armor within range uh where the israelis could hit them without having to Uh get any nearer basically and that this wasn't a threat and the only question was not whether oh What are the egyptians going to do and are we going to defend ourselves or anything like that?
It was simply are we going to take advantage of this opportunity?
Or are you going to let it pass by you weakling prime minister?
And the prime minister gave in to the generals and they launched the war And that's six days in israel 45 years ago from the son of the general who did it Yeah, that's miko peled and uh, you know what he says you can take to the bank He's a close person a friend of mine.
As a matter of fact, we'll be together this afternoon at dupont circle in washington Speaking at a major rally on behalf of those poor people in gaza 120 of whom have killed and thousands injured You know, let's talk about gaza because there's so much to talk about but hang on a second because we still got some uss liberty stuff here now So we we have to assume And I probably didn't set this up very good at the beginning.
Anyway, ray, but I don't know uh, but Assuming you know for people who aren't familiar with this story at all.
It sounds kind of crazy I mean, obviously, you know what you're talking about.
It must have happened but help people understand how this happened why this happened Uh, it seems like an awful risk For israel to attack an american navy ship for any reason or pretext.
Was this a What was it ray?
Well, uh, we have to make a really clear distinction between what happened And we know chapter and verse on that.
I already mentioned some of the intercepted messages pilot to control control tower And why it happened?
We don't know Exactly why it happened Uh, we have some theories, uh And you know, we could probably find out if we just went nasty israelis Can you imagine, you know, yeah, that's you that's you should ask miko pellet.
Does he know?
No, no, he didn't well, you know, the theories are and this is the best one in my view Um, they knew that the uss liberty was collecting All the intelligence that was available in the air or in the ether Right outside right in international waters mind you at 13 miles off the sinai now There are two possible explanations to have equal merit in my view one is that The israelis were about to go up and take the golan heights from syria the next day in those days There was no way for the israelis to prepare that kind of offensive didn't take an awful lot They had already destroyed the syrian air force, but there was no ways for them to do that in secret now, um the last thing the israelis wanted was to give the united states of america Any chance to say no, no, no stop now.
You done it Yeah, you know the russians might might intervene now don't you don't need to go on heights Okay, you got the sinai you got kazi you got west break my god don't do That's what they didn't want now.
The israelis Are very adept at preferring to ask for forgiveness rather than permission And they knew that the uss liberty would intercept all the information They needed to wire back to washington and say look the israelis are going up in the golan The israelis just didn't want to give our ambassador our military attache or our defense minister McNamara at the time any chance to say look you do this and you're going to pay a price don't do this They didn't want that and so they went ahead and it was they seized the golan heights.
That's the first and the best I think Speculation the second one has to do with prisoners now the The israeli army came down through the sinai on three axes, right?
And they captured lots of egyptians.
They couldn't defend themselves And they ended up with a couple of hundred prisoners of war And they gathered in this place right off right off In the sinai right off the mediterranean there and You know the prisons of war are real pain That's why drones are so great, you know, just kill them you don't have to You don't have to feed them.
You don't have to water them.
You don't have to guard them And you know, the israeli army was not all that big.
They didn't want to be You know deflected by having to guard all these persons or feed them and water them.
And so, um, the There were two israeli journalists there That watched the israelis Shoot up these prisoners and put them in a ditch Now they have written books about this.
No one has disputed their authenticity but the second theory would be that since the this u.s Intelligence collection ship the uss liberty was only 13 nautical miles offshore And they could see what was going on You know Capture the the sigint the signals intelligence that the last thing israelis wanted was for american public or anyone to know even the U.s.
Navy what they were doing with these egyptian prisoners Now they did do those things with the egyptian prisoners whether or not that was the enough to explain Uh, why why this all happened?
I'm, not sure.
The other factor of course is russia Uh, they didn't want uh, they didn't want russia to be involved and they get to get the u.s involved And could pretend that it was an egyptian ship that sunk sunk the liberty.
There might be extra insurance there so What I want to emphasize is the difference between what we know what happened and what we don't know And the reason we don't know it is because nobody has had the guts to go and ask right?
Sorry, tell us Go back to what was going on at cia at the time Uh, and I mean you said you had a window into this because of you know The fear that the soviet union might become involved, but so What all did you know then?
Well, I didn't know about the mcnamara and johnson conversation with admiral geist That was of course very closely held and i'm not even sure anybody at uh at cia headquarters was apprised of that Uh, and uh, you know, all we knew was that the israelis had done this wonderful job But that that it was uh the wrong ship and uh, uh, there was a lot of A lot of consternation, but when we got the intercepts, we knew that they had done it deliberately And uh, you know, that was right away you guys got the intercepts right away.
Yeah Through nsa and they're shared with us and you know, it was like the gulf of tonkin We also know that that second attack was a crock that had never happened But we were we were deprived of the opportunity to put that in our publications And share it with congress and other people even fulbright was full speed ahead on the tonkin gulf resolution So there are limits to what intelligence can do.
I didn't know chapter and verse and I think it's a 50 50 chance that no one except maybe the director himself Was it was involved in uh in knowing he would have had no role to play but in knowing That the commander in chief lyndon johnson Had told admiral geist to withdraw those planes and let the israelis off Scott free and then participate in a cover-up which lasted, you know, 40 45 years, you know, it's a Admiral moorer before he died and he was you know, he was a straight arrow navy admiral He was just shocked at all this and you know, one of the things he said I have this in it I think I could find yeah, he says, you know, um Uh moorer and u.s.
Ambassador ed peck A friend of mine who served many years in the middle east They both condemned washington's attitude toward israel as quote obsequious unctuous Subservience at the cost of the lives and morale of our service members and their families and quote, well, that's what it was and If you look at the only sensible state department advisor that lbj had in those days george ball He wrote a book about this Passionate attachment.
It's an incredible book.
Guess what?
Look for somebody to review it, huh?
This is 50 years ago.
Has it been reviewed?
Well, maybe in you know in the in consortium news.com Yeah You know, so this all is kept out of circulation Americans don't know The first thing about the liberty and maybe it would be you know moore did his own investigation Okay And he he had covered the fact that the navy lawyer The navy lawyer turned out to be the navy liar and he had a Pang of conscience before he too died And he he admitted, you know, I just did what they told me to do Uh, we uh, we were told to say that it was a terrible mistake and the israelis apologized So just let it be his name was captain boston and you know, he He admitted all this but the blue ribbon independent commission that moorer Assembled to look into this made just you know, let me just Me name two of the the conclusions quote Unmarked israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the uss liberty bridge Fired 30 millimeter cannon and rockets into the ship Survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking israeli aircraft number two the torpedo boat attack Involved not only the firing of torpedoes but machine gunning of liberties firefighters and stretcher bearers The israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine gun at close range three Of the liberty's life rafts that have been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue The most seriously wounded end quote now, this is not mcgovern.
This is not some anti-semite This is admiral thomas moore former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Who who took it upon himself to his To appoint his own blue ribbon panel of navy and other people lawyers and so forth And that this was their two of their findings.
So, you know, it's pretty bad and uh, I am going down.
Uh Yeah, I think i'd still make it uh down to arlington cemetery as I have every Every year where there's a small gathering now We had a rather large one last year for the 50th anniversary But there's an unmarked.
Well, it's a marked grave now Of some of the survivors that they couldn't figure out who was who and which head belonged to which torso Uh, that's a very moving ceremony lately uh Actually a general came uh two years ago and so some navy brass is Gradually becoming aware of this indignity And we are getting a little bit respect and the arlington cemetery folks are are very accommodating normally Hey, let me tell you about the sponsors of this show.
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No it and each of those is one word three words, you know get it.
Yeah No dev no ops no it it's by hussein badak chani and it's about how to run Your business right in a libertarian way libertystickers.com I guess rick didn't like the great new website, so we'll have to wait Someday, we'll get a new website There's still a lot of good stickers on there, but we've got a lot of good art.
That's not up there yet I don't know man I don't know man libertystickers.com.
That's the new slogan.
I don't know Um and tom was liberty classroom if uh, you like learning things i'll get a commission if you sign up by way of the link on my website And listen, if you want a new and the reason my website is down is my own broken servers Uh, but if you want a new good looking website like the one I do have when it's up and running at scotthorton.org Uh, then check out expanddesigns.com Scott expanddesigns.com Scott and you will save 500 bucks on your new website All right now so If the attack had succeeded and the ship had been sunk, they would have just blamed it on egypt That was the israeli intent, uh, whether they would have gotten away with it.
Well God, you tell me scott If lbj was unwilling, uh to let uh, let his aircraft do battle with who was attacking the liberty Uh, I suppose one could reason that that would be covered up as well And it'd be blamed on the russians and that would be a big that would be blamed on the egyptians And and the russians and what the israelis did want was the u.s to get involved militarily So that's a another possible explanation as to why they tried to sink the whole thing and leave no survivors the more predominant explanation, of course is that the the machinery, uh, the uh, the We used to do these things on tape the tapes of all those conversations That happened in in the sinai and elsewhere between the Control tower and tel aviv and so forth that they were all perishable and could be Sunk to the bottom of the med.
Nobody would know Know what what really happened and the israelis would be free to spin their own yarn So and perhaps part of their calculation in the first place was don't worry about lbj.
We can count on him Well, unfortunately Jesus that was the case then and even more unfortunately now This is the case now And we're talking about iran now And there is no reason in god's earth that iran poses a strategic or even tactical hostility position toward the united states of america uh The israelis try to make it seem that they do pose a danger to them and indeed Uh hezbollah and southern lebanon now actually part of the lebanese government uh, they do have the with they do have the wherewithal to to uh Fight the israelis once the israelis attack southern lebanon.
That's new That was shown in in on the ground so to speak about six or seven years ago So israelis feel like they don't have total dominance over that part of the world So the best thing for them would be get would be a snooker someone like Donald trump and john bolton into starting a dust up which would allow them to wreak Air and missile damage on their arch rival iran The other thing i'll say about iran is that probably no one has told trump this but this charge That iran is the foremost sponsor of international terrorism That was true 40 years ago Okay, 40 40 years ago.
It's not true.
Now.
It's not true at all The u.s has been fighting for iran since 2001.
So What the hell they're complaining about maybe maybe they're mad because the iranians really owe us a drink or something after giving them baghdad and backing the hazaras in afghanistan this whole time for them and Um giving them an excuse to increase their power and influence in syria in order to fight the cia's al-qaeda terrorists there, you know I guess you know i'd resent that too Anyway, we don't want to do we don't want to redo too much of the other day's interview I wanted to point out that when we were talking the other day about dennis blair Went and told the israelis.
We're not going to have another uss liberty incident This is what you referred to in our last interview that now this is what we're talking about uss liberty incident for those who who didn't know um It's the biggest deal in the whole world that people have never heard of and then of course As you're saying the fact that people have never heard of it Goes to show just how powerful the israel lobby is in the united states of america There's no history channel special about this and there's not going to be Yeah, it was actually uh, admiral mike mullen the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff The israeli counterparts on this at a time When they were actually uh threatening to to do something get us involved So he read the riot act to them and uh, that was just sort of his ace in the hole Saying look, we know what you did.
We know what you did on june 8th 1967 You think you've hidden that from from us?
Well, not from us not not from us.
Navy admirals All right, don't even think about trying to do something like that again And that's just amazing that that he would invoke that to them in that context and it does go to show How worried the obama group was in 2012 about what netanyahu was going to do Well, you know what's really interesting.
Yeah Is that um The israelis kept kept threatening to do it.
Anyway, uh now we discussed uh ad nauseum how the u.s intelligence estimate said in 2007 november That israel that That iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier, right?
We knew about that and yet the israelis kept telling our statesmen Statesmen our military and our president.
Oh, no.
No, they're doing it.
They're working on a nuclear We have to zap him.
We have to zap him.
Well, what happens?well, um u.s Statesmen, so to speak at the state department and in the new york times and i'm thinking of David sanger who tells this story with great pride Long story short We bought the israelis off because we thought they were going to attack iran and we didn't want to get involved And so he said look this is what we could do Have your intelligence guys in mossad talk with our guys at cia and nsa we can develop this This this virus.
Let's call it stuxnet.
Okay.
Yeah, and and what we'll do is we'll We'll not only fool around with the electronics.
We will destroy it Yeah, we can destroy iranian centrifuges the most advanced ones that they've built.
We'll destroy as many as we can and Would then would you please then not if we do that together, would you please not not attack iran?
That's what went down That's how stuxnet got involved It was a it was to preempt what the israelis were going to do on the basis of their false claims That the iranians were working on a nuclear weapon now, you wouldn't you know what happened with stuxnet Yeah, it did get out.
It did cause immeasurable damage and and you know One can reason or one can argue that destroying physically destroying centrifuges sure, they're they're developing nuclear fuel But iran has this great big domestic nuclear energy program And there was not an iota of evidence that they were turning that into a weapons related program and yet Israel intelligence dominated just like it dominated before the attack on iraq.
That's how serious all this is And the thing is of course most americans know neither chapter no verse on this given the Witness the fact that here I am in this big church of very progressive people And out of 300 only three had even heard about the uss liberty.
Yeah.
All right now listen, I want to mention Uh real quick here.
I have interviews I'm having server problems.
So some of the older archives are down, but you can find them all on youtube everybody and there's joe metters There's actually two different interviews of joe metters.
And then there's another one of ron kukal.
That's kukal And both of those gentlemen survivors of the uss liberty attack that you can find the archives And in fact when I searched youtube scott horton and uss liberty There are five or six results for ray mcgovern interviews in the past where we've talked about this as well if people want to go back and Take a look at those and share them around because it is such a shocking story But now so i'm glad we still have a few minutes here Uh to talk about what's going on in the gaza strip ray and you said you're going to an action this afternoon there um in dc so listen, um I just saw uh This is gaza is a great, uh twitter feed to follow and they've got pictures from the protest march today just a massive sea of people and they're playing volleyball and they're having a good time and people might say they're a bunch of hamas terrorists, but Yeah, actually they look like a bunch of americans You know if you if you took the context away, they're just humans like everybody else and and here they are doing an mlk style gandhi style um Non-violent action to just protest the fact that they're in prison simply for being born the wrong religion Well, yeah, it's uh, it's about the most horrendous Situation you can imagine.
Uh, i've been over to israel and the west bank a couple of times and None of those occasions was able to get into gaza I was on the u.s.
Boat to gaza This was in 2011 okay Now that what's that seven years ago?uh the previous year um the mavi mamara a very large boat turkish Flagged was shot up by the israelis together with a couple of other ships On one of which and right my colleague was Now they killed nine people including an american citizen, too Shot him point blank range in the head as he was already down laying on the ground Yeah And uh, so here we are the next year what we did was we said look we need a u.s.
Flagged ship We took up donations and we got we got a really nice medium sized boat put together and a terrific tarpaulin over the top with a boat sized u.s.
American flag, okay uh, we gathered in in in athens and we were ready to sail and uh, we had a Terrific boatload of people including guess what?
People from the new york times People from reuters people from bloomberg.
In other words, this was going to be a big deal, right?
Uh, we had other we had dignitaries on there as soon as I remember the name of alice walker who was with us, you know I mean, this was a big deal and we're all really enthusiastic because number one it was an american flagship What would the israelis do to that?and number two we had a A special forces guy from the former israeli a former guy from the israeli army who went who dove under our ship every morning To make sure that the propeller had not been severed as two other of these ships had had Happened to them.
So what happens?
Okay, so So we're ready to go and all of a sudden we hear no your air conditioner doesn't pass inspection air conditioner Conditioner talking about a fan.
Okay.
Oh, so we smelled the rat.
Guess what?
Obama went to netanyahu and he said look, uh, bb we we got this ship now Uh, it's really a boat.
Uh, we got about 50 people They want to get into gaza just to you know, show the flag and go through the blockade.
So please don't sink it now Please don't shoot it up like it did last year with the marvy mama and the others.
Okay, okay And uh, we get this sphinx like smile from Netanyahu and obama says now, please look, you know, this is okay us flagship.
So, you know You're not going to do what you did last last year No answer from netanyahu.
So what does obama do?
He leans all over the greeks who needed a lot of financial aid at the time and still do he said look You let those boats sail from greek harbors no more imf loans folks you got that my god I mean you want to talk about subservience unctuous?obedience to a Country other than your own that's what happened.
So what do we do?
We sailed anyway We got a captain in a whole pack of trouble and we had to bail him out in u.s courts But he sailed and we got nine nautical miles off out of piraeus out of athens and it was the most exhilarating 20 25 minutes i've ever experienced and then the ninja turtle uniformed pt boats greek coast guard Intercepted us and very apologetically.
I mean look here's greece a seafaring nation for like 100 million years, right?
And they said oh, sorry, we can't let you out of our waters and we said who says well We can't tell you who said, you know, so we smelled that rat There was a standoff for about an hour and they pleaded with us and finally we said well Now they're going to board us and shoot us up or not shoot us up.
At least they're bored us We don't want that.
We took the ship We took the boat back and that was the end of the u.s.
Boat to gaza.
So, you know, this is really really flagrant bowing to A guy like netanyahu when if obama couldn't have said said look let these guys through which he didn't well Nobody's trump's not going to do that either and gaza, of course Is the flash point here?um The palestinians for listeners that haven't followed this uh with uh With silent marches proclaiming their right to return to their homes, which were taken over by the israelis Uh, they get shot up Last count I think was 119 people killed.
Okay by israeli snipers 13 000.
Okay count that 13 000 injured they shoot at your leg with these bullets that explode On their way out the size of a golf ball.
Okay, and there was no particular reason for the israelis to do this No, no one was armed and new york times.
You'll see we'll blame this all on hamas And so will our representative at the u.n.
So it's a very disgraceful Performance by our government all because no one heeded the the warning of our first president Also a general's name was washington who said, you know The worst thing we can do in foreign affairs is have a passionate attachment to another country on the false belief That the objectives and the behavior of that country Coincide coincides Coincide with our own and that's what we've had with israel ever since john kennedy was killed And that's what we have now in spades All right, everybody.
That's the great ray mcgovern former cia analyst and uh Co-founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity regular writer at consortium news.com and anti-war.com and check out his own website At ray mcgovern.com as well.
Thanks again.
We appreciate it Most welcome All right, so you guys know the deal, uh fools aaron.us for the book scott.
Horton.org and youtube.com Scott horton show for all the interviews 4500 of them now going back to 2003 for you there Read what I want you to read at anti-war.com and at libertarian institute.org And follow me on twitter at scott horton show.
Thanks
